


Loaded

by monimala



Category: Captain America (2011), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Multi, OT3, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-16
Updated: 2012-06-16
Packaged: 2017-11-07 20:32:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monimala/pseuds/monimala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in some nebulous merging of comics canon and film canon. They waste no time with tenderness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loaded

She collects them. Like weapons in her arsenal. Like bits of sea glass on the sand. They’re her belongings, her mementos, her battle scars: James, who talks too much, and Barton, who seldom uses a word that’s not needed. 

“Natalia,” the one calls her, pulling her against his body, making her shudder with the cool slide of his cybernetic arm against her back. “Nat” or “Tasha” or “Widow” says the other, his arrow finding its home between her thighs. They waste no time with tenderness, with sentimentalities, instead grasping fiercely and desperately for the stark clarity of sex. 

Memories can be changed, implanted, erased. The sweat of their bodies, the scratches and bite marks, have only slightly more permanence. It was her body that brought her hawk back to her; it was her body that remembered her soldier first…and she knows it can just as easily betray her. It, too, is a weapon.

_What if I kill you?_ They’ve each asked the question, with a ghastly edge of humor, in the bright light of morning. _What if I lash out in the middle of the night?_ What if there is some bit of programming buried deep that, when triggered, will leave the red stains of slaughter on their sheets? She knows how to snap a neck with her thighs, how to break and bash and sting. She understands that the cradle of James’ empty eye socket is a perfect fit for her fingers and that the short distance between Barton’s chin and his jugular is like a white flag of surrender. She knows they have been her enemies, and it is the kind of intel that seeps into the marrow and takes root.

It wouldn’t be accidental. It would, most certainly, be on purpose. It wouldn’t be clean.

Separately, the three of them know what it is to be unmade. Together, they are none of them quite whole…fitting together like irregular pieces of a puzzle. James, who often says too much, and Barton, who says entirely too little...they’re her belongings, her mementos, her battle scars. And her partners in death.

\--end--

June 15, 2012


End file.
